AT YOUR SERVICE 1997

JACK ROBERTIELLO

GREENWICH TOWNSHIP, N.J. -- When independent ShopRite retailer Joseph Colalillo began thinking about what direction to take for the design of a new store here, the first thing he did was consult with shoppers.

The new store, opened in late May, was to be the largest by far for Colalillo, president of the three unit Flemington, N.J.-based Colalillo ShopRite. So he thought speaking with consumers about what worked and what didn't work at his stores was an important move in designing a format that could compete in a crowded market.

The results? The store has an increased emphasis on meals, mixing a variety of food-service systems and home-meal replacement programs developed by the retailer-owned cooperative Wakefern Food Corp., Elizabeth, N.J., with a traditional deli operation.

More than one-third of the 68,000-square-foot floor space in the airy, warehouse-style ShopRite here is given over to hot and cold meals and other perishable areas. The commitment to the fresh aspects of the store are so strong that Colalillo also adopted another design quirk his customers proposed, a second entrance that allows shoppers easy access to those fresh foods.

"Customers gave us a lot of feedback about the way our stores were laid out," said Colalillo, who is also a Wakefern vice chairman. "They'd shop in the perishables aisles first, and by the time they got to the checkout counter, the bread would be flattened, and their perishables would end up bruised at the bottom of the carts. It gave them a lot of trouble."

When first exploring design concepts for the store that might correct the problem, Colalillo looked at a variety of store designs in supermarkets around the country, visiting a number of them including a Cub Foods store in Colorado, which included a second entrance that sped traffic in and out of the store. The dual entrances at the Cub store weren't designed specifically for quick access to meals and perishables, he said, but the idea made sense.

It's Colalillo's belief that customers shop at his stores weekly for shelf-stable items and other goods, and that they return two or three times each week for milk, bread, produce, ready-to-cook and ready-to-heat items. And anything that made those second and third trips easier would mean higher sales in those departments, he reasoned.

For the systems and components in ShopRite's meals departments, Colalillo depended on Wakefern's Chef Express branded program.

Started as an ordinary rotisserie chicken program, the Chef's Express banner has evolved over the past year to include a complete line of Wakefern-developed hot food-service selections, with the wholesaler formally introducing last fall items such as rotisserie pork loin, chicken francaise, ribs, baked pasta dishes, side dishes, vegetables and other items.

At this store, what Colalillo has stocked is evidence of an expansion of Chef's Express items, and not only those that are cooked on site or served hot.

Customers at this store can buy baked ziti, for instance, in a variety of ways. They can select a full baked-ziti dinner sold out of a low-profile cooler signed "Ready to heat. Microwavable. Quick fix," where entrees and side dishes are packed in a Chef's Express-branded white bag with a yellow menu on which each item in the meal is checked off. Or the ziti can be bought as an individual prepacked entree merchandised with many others out of the same cooler. Or customers can find the ziti, or other pasta dishes much like it, at the hot-food bar, and serve themselves.

The store also stocks a line of Chef's Express meal components packed in heat-sealed containers, including baked stuffed potatoes, chicken with rice, pasta dishes and many others. These all appear to be recent extensions of the Chef's Express brand into the chilled-food category, an area many industry observers believe offers the potential of explosive growth for supermarkets, alternate formats and food-service operators.

Chef's Express gets significant play in the store design as well. All the meal components -- hot food, ready-to-eat and ready-to-heat packaged food, soups, made-to-order and premade pizzas -- are gathered in one department under an enormous green awning branded prominently with the Chef's Express logo. The green and white striped awning is located opposite a similar yellow and white awning that hangs over the store's appy department.

Wakefern officials declined the opportunity to discuss their Chef's Express program.

In addition to the self-service hot-food line, bagged meals and packed entrees, the store also features a food-service counter, a soup bar, a 20-foot long salad bar, a pizza counter with premade and customized pies, a premade sandwich cooler, and a refrigerated case stocked with a variety of prepacked salads.

But Wakefern's four varieties of marinated rotisserie chicken are also given big play here, with a sign indicating at what time freshly cooked chickens will be ready. The signs also trumpet the Chef's Express-Perdue connection. Perdue supplies whole chickens to more than 125 Wakefern stores in five ways: skinless, plain and marinated in either Italian seasoning or in ShopRite's branded lemon-pepper Chef's Express Classic. Turkey breast and chicken breast also come marinated. Last fall, a company official credited Perdue with generating a tenfold increase in chicken sales.

With about 900 square feet of area dedicated to various meal-replacement options, the entire meals area is larger than ShopRite's traditional deli/appy area, said Colalillo.

But aside from a few benches, the store is not equipped with a sit-down area conducive to in-store dining. "We don't believe that's where the future is, eating in stores," said Colalillo. Wegmans, Ukrop's and the like may be able to carve out a business with an intense focus on prepared food to eat in or take home, but for more conventional retailers, he said, in-store restaurants don't make any sense.